


Fragile Vessels

by yekoc



Category: The Will Darling Adventures - K.J. Charles
Genre: I thought you were dead, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:54:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29815617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yekoc/pseuds/yekoc
Summary: Will looked across the churchyard at them; at Kim’s much-disliked older brother and his weedy, pale wife, and couldn’t imagine what it was he would say, even if he’d been an invited guest.“Hello, many condolences; you have no idea who I am but your brother and I were something maybe approaching” -- Kim had said the wordlovers, once, a month before it happened, and neither of them had mentioned it again -- “that is, when he wasn’t lying through his teeth to me, which most of the time he was.”
Relationships: Will Darling/Kim Secretan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Fragile Vessels

**Author's Note:**

> _  
> Their aches, losses, their pangs of love,  
>  And other blows to nature's fragile vessel  
> _  
> \- Timon of Athens, Act II Scene 7

It poured rain during the funeral, and Will didn’t notice. He felt a bit like he was back in the trenches--the mud beneath his boots, the vast blankness, the miles of destruction stretching out ahead.

“You’re soaked through,” Maisie whispered to him, fumbling with his umbrella. “Will? There’s no use in you catching ‘flu and--oh, Will.” Her voice broke a bit, and she got the umbrella open at last and held it over him.

“Should we -- say something?” Maisie asked. “To the family.”

Will looked across the churchyard at them; at Kim’s much-disliked older brother and his weedy, pale wife, and couldn’t imagine what it was he would say, even if he’d been an invited guest. “Hello, many condolences; you have no idea who I am but your brother and I were something maybe approaching” -- Kim had said the word _lovers_ , once, a month before it happened, and neither of them had mentioned it again -- “that is, when he wasn’t lying through his teeth to me, which most of the time he was.”

Less of the time, Will had been starting to hope. And then Kim had gone out sailing with his erstwhile fiancee, the Honorable Phoebe Stephens-Prince, and a storm had come up and overturned the yacht, and the fisherman who passed by had only come back with Phoebe.

Phoebe was there now, standing near Kim’s family but apart from them, as though on the other side of an invisible wall: perfectly still and staring at the open grave, her face a perfect mask of blankness. Even if Will had been able to speak, he wouldn’t have known what to say--whatever he and Kim had been to each other, Phoebe and Kim had been something else, something sweeter and easier and, it sometimes seemed, more fundamental. To see the dancing, sparkling life wiped from her face like this chilled Will in a way the rain had failed to do.

“I wish we could be there with her, at least,” Maisie said, seeing where Will was looking, but they both knew that this--yards away, half-hidden behind the monument to some earl who had kicked off centuries ago--was as close as they could get. It was one thing to pretend that this was a world they belonged to, had some kind of place in, when Kim was there to smooth the way and Phoebe’s sparkle fell equally on everyone, but now it felt jarring.

A few months -- half a year, maybe -- of adventure and intrigue, champagne and fast cars and the way Kim looked in the moonlight, and now it was over. It had probably been inevitable, but Will hadn’t expected it to happen this way: for losing Kim to feel as though he’d been stabbed from behind in the trenches, all the breath gone from his lungs and nothing left for him to scream with.

When it was over, as they streamed out through the old wooden gate, Will felt a hand press against his own. He turned, through his fog, and saw that it was Phoebe: still with that carefully blank mask on, no sign of tears, her hair barely bothered by the rain.

She leaned towards him and whispered in his ear.

“Don’t hate him, Darling -- he says he’s sorry. Don’t hate me either, if it comes to that, Will -- promise?”

“Oh _Phoebe_ ,” Will said, “I couldn’t -- it wasn’t your --” and then he found he couldn’t speak at all, and rather than him being the one to comfort Phoebe in her loneliness and grief, she was handing him an altogether inadequate silk handkerchief and kissing him sadly on the cheek.

~*~*~

Two weeks later, Will returned from drinks out with Maisie, afraid he hadn’t been very good company at all. He was making an effort, or trying to make one, but the dullness that had seemed to settle over the world with Kim’s death wasn’t so easy to scrub away with a few pints of ale and a friend’s company.

The light was on in the bedroom of the bookshop, and Will felt his heart stop in his chest for three long and precise seconds before memory returned. He must have left it on before leaving to meet Maisie, that was all. Well. He’d make sure not to do that again.

At least he didn’t have to worry that it was burglars or Zodiac or some other sinister force come to skulk about his innocent little bookshop, he thought, trudging up the stairs. Not that he wouldn’t trade--oh hell, he’d trade it all, he’d burn the damn shop to the ground if it meant that Kim weren’t--weren’t--

Weren’t dead instead of sitting right there on Will’s bed, which was where he was. He _looked_ dead, if it came to that, a far cry from impeccable, polished Lord Arthur Secretan: he had a week’s worth of beard, mud in his hair, and what looked like blood splashed across his torn shirt. Will shut his eyes tightly, and opened them again: this had happened in the war, sometimes: his friend Peters had sworn up and down that he’d seen his village pub just across no man’s land, lights on and warm and waiting for him.

Kim was still there, not wavering, just bone-tired and dirty and looking at Will with a wariness laid over something else--something darker and flashing.

“Did you--” Will tried to take a breath, but the stabbing feeling was back, only now instead of numbness it was like he could feel the knife, lodged there, throbbing painfully somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. “Did you lie to me? Were you--did you plan it?”

“I suppose I deserve that,” Kim said. Neither of them had moved: Will felt his palm sweating where he still gripped the doorknob.

“I didn’t plan it,” he said. “The boat accident wasn’t an accident. There was a storm, but we’d been sabotaged: the mainsail splintered like so many matchsticks, and the dinghy had a hole in it; all the life preservers were missing. I barely had time to think, let alone _do_ anything. The only thing that seemed obvious was that they were after me, not Phoebe, and that she’d be safe if she could get away alone. I practically had to knock her out to get her to let go of me before that fishing boat got there.”

The reports said that Phoebe had been hysterical when she was found. Will had put it down to dramatization by the press, because Phoebe was deceptively cool-headed in a crisis, but if she’d thought Kim was sacrificing himself for her--well.

“I told her I’d swim away,” Kim said, as though reading Will’s mind, “but the storm was bad, and frankly if I’d been her I wouldn’t have believed me, either.”

Of course not. No one knew better than Phoebe Kim’s tendency towards mercenary self-sacrifice, or saw more clearly the dark loneliness that edged him. To feel the waters closing over him, to know--think-- that Phoebe was in danger because of him…

Kim glanced at him, then away.

“I did try to swim away,” he said. “As I said, the storm was bad, and I had the worse luck to be knocked on the head by a loose bit of boat--next thing I knew I was waking up on the rocks, my mouth half full of sand.”

And then, Will thought, and then three weeks--of--and now he was here, alive.

“Don’t tell me the rest,” he said, around the stabbing pain of the knife. “Not yet. I’m going to want to throw you out if I think about it.”

Kim opened his mouth to speak, and Will locked the door--their private code for putting the outside world, and their own frequent antagonism, aside for long enough to enjoy each other. Then he crossed the small room in one step and gripped Kim’s shoulders. Beneath the ruined fabric, they were warm and real.

“Shut up,” Will said, “I locked the door.” He paused, furious.

“I went to your bloody _funeral_ ,” and then his mouth was on Kim’s, which wasn’t half-full of sand anymore--just the hot slick press of his beautiful, lying tongue.

They kissed until Kim tried to slide to his knees in front of Will, and Will cradled Kim’s face with both hands and wouldn’t let him. His cheeks were rough with stubble and crusted with dirt, and Will couldn’t get enough of how warm he was, his blood-hot mouth. He held him there, enjoying it, and kissed him until Kim made a noise like a whimper and said, “Will, _please_.”

His mouth was even hotter on Will’s prick, if that was possible. Through a haze of lust and pleasure Will could see the dirt and blood matted into Kim’s normally-shining hair, and he realized that Kim had come straight here from wherever he’d been. It might have been too dangerous for him to go back to his rooms; the danger could still be out there, lurking, surrounding the bookshop even now.

Will didn’t care. He ran his fingers through the filthy hair and curved them around Kim’s ears, thumbed at his neck and let himself thrust into that slick mouth. Kim groaned around him, and Will said, roughly, “Touch yourself--I want you to come with me in your mouth,” and then, when Kim wrapped a hand around his own length, “That’s right. That’s it, show me how much you love this,” and finally, absurdly, “You’re here now, Kim, you’re here--you’re here--” again and again until he came, Kim swallowing desperately around him.

He couldn’t stop saying it, he found: he pulled Kim’s hand off of himself, ignoring his protests, and got them both somehow onto the bed. He felt he couldn’t be close enough to Kim, to the slender but devastatingly solid reality of his body. “You’re here,” he said again, “you’re here,” and Kim bucked against him and shuddered and came in long, hot pulses all over Will’s stomach and thigh.

“You’re here,” Will said one last time, helplessly, and Kim said, “Oh, oh Will,” and swiped one elegant thumb under Will’s eye.

“Am I crying?” Will asked, and Kim said, gravely, “It looks as though you are, Darling, yes.”

“It’s like the rain,” Will said, and didn’t bother to explain. The knife was gone, finally; for the first time in weeks he could breathe, and he could feel things, and he was furious.

“You can sleep here,” he said, getting up from the bed, “and then in the morning I’d like you to leave, please. I’ll spend the night in the office.”

“Will,” said Kim, and his voice gave Will a vision of him washed up on that beach, half-dead and parched with thirst.

“Can’t I at least--”

“Explain?” Will asked. “Let me see if I can do it for you: you were under attack, possibly remaining Zodiac cell, possibly some other group who are dead set on murdering you for frankly not unimaginable reasons; you saw that Phoebe was nearly collateral and that Maisie and would be in danger, too, until the cell was taken care of; you had a flash of realization that the world thought you were dead and that that gave you a useful advantage over said group determined to kill you and kept Phoebe, Maisie, and myself safe at the same time; you spent three sunny weeks defeating aforementioned criminal group alone before finally crawling back here. Have I covered it all?”

“Pretty well,” Kim said. “You have made me sound impressively competent and clear-headed; I didn’t realize the world thought I was dead for days, and it took me even longer to work out how I might use that to my advantage.”

“Is it worth asking,” Will said, trying to keep his voice level, “why you didn’t tell me you were alive, let alone ask for my help?”

Kim at least had the decency to look away when he answered. “It was simpler,” he said. “It had to look real. I did think of it.”

“Right,” Will said, “Well, I look forward to the papers: Lord Arthur Secretan, a Lazarus for Our Time, et cetera. Get some sleep; you could use it.”

And, before he could lose his nerve, he turned and left the room. Kim didn’t try to stop him.

~*~*~

In the morning, Kim was gone: the bed made neatly, as though he’d never been there. Will made himself toast and tea and sat down with a book. Five minutes later, he put the tea down half-drunk with a sudden unnamed chill, and walked at something much brisker than his normal pace to the street corner, where there was usually a small boy selling newspapers.

“Read all about it!” the boy shouted. “Lord Arthur Found Alive! Secretan Saved from Shipwreck!”

Will bought a paper and told the small boy to keep the change.

“Are you sure, sir?” the boy asked, agog at the amount, and Will patted him on the head absurdly and nearly whistled on his way back to the shop.

He was still angry. It was just that one could be angry and glad at the same time--so glad that every morning simply waking up and remembering felt like watching the sun rise.

“Well of course I’m angry at him, too, darling--dear,” Phoebe said over lunch later that week, cigarette holder dangling insouciantly from her fingers. “What he did was simply terrible. I suppose I expected deep down that he _was_ alive, you know, because he told me he’d try to swim, and that I mustn’t tell anyone, and he always does what he says, in the end. But when I saw him get bashed by that terrible _spar_ , or whatever one calls those sticks of wood that float about during shipwrecks, and simply go _under_ \--” she paled and took a long drag of the cigarette.

“I can’t keep doing it,” Will told her. “Being lied to, never being trusted. I thought we’d come to a better understanding, and then he used my--my grief--as what, as a convenient alibi? I don’t understand how you can forgive him.”

“Has anyone ever told you what it was like for Kim after Henry died?” Phoebe said, out of the blue. “His younger brother, of course, the one who was killed in the war after Kim refused to go.”

“We talked about it,” Will said. “I know he feels guilty. I tried to tell him it wasn’t his fault, that anyone could die at any time, particularly in the trenches. There’s simply no logic to thinking that Henry died because of him.”

“Henry was a nightmare, really,” Phoebe said, as though she hadn’t heard him. “Boorish, a bit of a bully--but he was young, and you can’t really blame the young altogether, can you? Kim and he never got along, but I think that sometimes it was the two of them against their brother, who’s even worse, simply awful--anyhow. Of course it wasn’t Kim’s fault that Henry died, no matter what he thinks. But to tell you the truth, darling--sorry--Kim was fairly awful himself then. All that mess about Bolsheviks, not that I’m unsympathetic to the _principle_ of it, but the groups he was in with were simply too nasty, not nice to him, not kind to women, not even very _intelligent_. Well, they were beneath Kim, and he could see it and didn’t care, because he was angry at the world and at his family, and then Henry died.”

Phoebe smoked for a moment, and Will watched her and thought what a relief it was to see her lovely face animated again, suffused with life. _Oh Kim_ , he thought. _If you’d really been dead I would have killed you._

“Before Henry died, Kim was--well, he’s never been _happy_ , but he was silly, even in all his what-do-you-call-it, ideology. He was carefree. That’s the word. He laughed all the time. And then after it happened, it was like something switched off. It switches back on, sometimes.”

Phoebe looked at Will and smiled sadly.

“It switches back on quite a bit when he’s with you, actually. But the thingy--the circus, the electrical circle what’s-it--is damaged, you see. Whether it’s logical or not, you know, he feels that he had a responsibility to Henry and that he shirked it for something Kimmishly close to selfish pleasures, even if his version of those pleasures was facilitating the proletarian revolution. He thinks he didn’t protect his little brother. Horrible brother or not, horrible war or not, that’s what it comes down to.”

“But I don’t see how that excuses what he did,” Will said stubbornly. He was trying not to imagine a younger Kim, head thrown back with laughter, shining where today he was shadowed.

“Of course it doesn’t _excuse_ it, darling. I’m only trying to explain that Kim _is_ the way that he is now: he changed when Henry died, and he learned that responsibility means denying one’s own desires for what he sees as a duty to protect. And that that duty is lonely and painful and burdensome, and desires are deceptive. I’m not saying he’ll never un-learn it. The circuit still flickers, you know. But I love Kim the way he is now, and I understand him. I wish you would try and see--it’s no use bullying him into changing; if Kim is worth it, he’s worth it as he is now. And I believe he is.”

It was the harshest Phoebe had ever been with him. She stubbed her cigarette out and left, kissing him on the way, and Will sat there until the waiter cleared his throat and nodded towards a couple waiting in the doorway for a table.

“Of course; excuse me,” Will said, and paid the bill. It wasn’t so much the details of what Phoebe had told him, which were new as far as they went, but not unexpected. It was the message, almost an ultimatum: take Kim as he is, or leave him.

Could he do it? Could he take a Kim who lied and distrusted, who was mercenary and cold-blooded--and loyal, and protective, and good in a fight; silver-tongued in more ways than one, clever and quick and so beautiful it hurt sometimes to look at him, like a physical blow.

Will had been trying to figure it out for months now, and he still wasn’t sure.

~*~*~

He wandered through London for hours, thinking, and when he finally arrived home it was dark; there was a light on in the bookshop.

 _Damn it, Kim_ , he thought, but he took the stairs two at a time without realizing he was doing it, and as he opened the door to his bedroom he could imagine it: the way Kim’s tired eyes would warm into a smile when he saw Will in the doorway; the elegant curl of his fingers around a glass of stolen scotch (or around something else entirely); how he always brought with him some new adventure, as though Kim himself were the key to a door Will hadn’t even known existed in the world.

And then he opened his own bedroom door, and the room was empty; he’d left the light on this time after all. Will sank back against the doorway and put his hands in his face and laughed and laughed, and then he gathered his coat and left.

“Lord Arthur is not back yet, I’m afraid,” said Peacock when Will arrived.

“I’ll wait,” said Will, and he did, or meant to, but he’d been walking for hours, and Kim’s rooms were warm and his sofa comfortable, and before he knew it he’d fallen asleep entirely.

He woke to a gentle hand on his face, and blinked up into Kim’s dark, glittering eyes.

“Hello, Darling,” said Kim, and Will said, “Hello, Secretan.”

“Would you like a drink?” Kim asked, already turning to busy himself with the bar, and then, more carefully, still facing away from Will, “Shall I lock the door?”

“Don’t bother,” Will said, and Kim’s shoulders tightened nearly imperceptibly.

“Not because--” Will started, then found he wasn’t quite sure how to go on.

“I’d like to walk through the door with you,” he said, helplessly. “Someday. Soon. Now, maybe. If you--”

“Oh,” Kim said, and turned to look at him, cocktail glasses dangling forgotten from his fingers, and his smile was like--like a circuit connecting.

This time, when they fucked, it was Kim who cried. Will laid him out on the bed and knelt over his lovely chest, slim and muscular, and gathered Kim’s wrists into one hand and pressed them up and into the headboard.

“I love you, you know,” he told Kim conversationally, feeling incandescent. He ran his free hand over his prick and watched Kim’s eyes follow his motion hungrily, and then he ran it over Kim’s lips until Kim opened for him, chasing it.

“I love when you take my cock like this,” Will said, watching the way Kim’s eyes widened with pleasure as he pressed in, inch by inch. “I love how much you love it. I love that you could come just from doing this for me--you could, couldn’t you?”

Kim made a noise around him that might have been “yes” and might have been a moan. Will pulled out, and thumbed at the corner of Kim’s reddened lips. “Couldn’t you?”

“Yes,” Kim said, “Anything you want, Will--please--”

“I want,” said Will, rubbing at Kim’s lower lip with his cock, pressing it there, “I want you to come, just like this, untouched, just from sucking my prick. You can do it, can’t you?”

“Yes,” Kim said again, desperation stark in the sharp angles of his face, and shuddered when Will rewarded him by fucking slowly into his mouth.

Nothing ever felt as good as this--nothing in the world compared, not to the sensation of Kim’s mouth around him. Not to the feeling of knowing how much Kim loved this: how it made him sloppy and sated with pleasure, like he was born for it. Will told him that, all of it, watched Kim’s throat ripple and his eyes grow lidded and slack and, finally, teary; heard the small, helpless, unconscious whimpering noises that signaled Kim at the height of pleasure, consumed by it.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Will said, and Kim made a sweet, hurt noise. “Come on, love; come for me, just like this, I know you can,” and he thrust shallowly, letting Kim feel it, tightening his grip on Kim’s wrists, and Kim bucked hard under him and came, so hard it splashed hot and wet across Will’s back.

“That’s it,” Will said, “that’s right,” and then he was saying it again, stupid and lost and in love: “You’re here, you’re here; I love you, you know, and you’re here,” and then he couldn’t hold out any longer, even though he wanted to, would have stayed all night in the warm heat of Kim’s mouth if he could have. He pulled out as he came, despite Kim’s whimper of loss, and came across his cheek and lips, livid and messy.

Kim was still shuddering when Will pulled him into his arms, and Will found he wasn’t done, that he couldn’t stop touching. Now that he’d let go of all that used to tower on the other side of the door, he felt weightless, infinite: why should they stop, when there were no more limits? He kissed Kim’s ruined cheek and lovely neck, and reached down to run fingers over his prick, exploring until he felt it harden again.

“I want to fuck you,” he said, and Kim rolled over to smile at him. A beam of moonlight came through the window and cut across his face; it hurt to look at, as though the knife were back. Will felt breathless.

“By all means,” said Kim, and Will laid him out in the bed and eased one slick finger into him, and then a second. It was quieter this time, and slower, Kim wrung out from their first encounter, and Will still half-poleaxed by the sight of Kim bathed in moonlight. How had he been given this, and nearly discarded it? Life was full of enough misery, he thought, pressing himself deep into Kim, then easing out slow enough to hear him moan quietly with the loss. Life was war and loss and betrayal, and sometimes you were lucky enough to find a gift glittering through it all: an uncle, a bookshop, a beautiful and infuriating man.

“Say it,” he said to Kim, when he felt he could barely hold out any longer, and Kim didn’t need to ask what he meant.

“I’m here,” he said, gasping as Will wrapped fingers around him. “I’m alive, darling,” and then Will shuddered and came, burying his face in Kim’s shoulders as he did, mouthing at the skin there, so consumed he barely felt Kim following after.

“Did you mean it,” Kim asked, a long time later. “About the door?”

“Phoebe gave me a talking-to,” Will said, and Kim laughed softly. His fingers carded through Will’s hair, a mindless, repetitive motion, and Will was half-curled against his chest.

“She said to take you or leave you, in so many words,” Will said. “And then I got home, and thought you were there, and--long story short, I’d much rather take you, as it turns out. If you’ll have me.”

“I’m very sorry, you know,” Kim said, instead of answering. “About the--I wasn’t thinking. I’ve been thinking, since. About how I’d feel if I thought you were dead. I don’t know if I could take it, really.”

Will lay still, and heard the thump-thump of Kim’s heart. When he spoke, he felt his lips move against Kim's skin.

“After the war, I’d hear men who had fought say that the meaning had gone out of things. I’d never understood them. Sure, life was different--it was hard, and I was hungry quite a lot, and I was angry and disappointed. But it never felt empty. It was still _life_. And then, you know, those weeks that I thought you were gone--I understood. It was like everything had gone blank.”

Kim’s fingers shook in Will’s hair, and then Will felt him lean down and press a kiss there, into the unruly curls.

“I am so sorry, my dear. I shan’t--I can’t promise to be perfect; I can only say that I’ll try harder than I have, and that I’ll never do _that_ again, or anything near it. The thing is that I don’t think I quite believed that--well, that it could ever be that bad, if I were gone. I thought in some ways it might be--”

Will sat up and looked at Kim, his sharp and weary and painfully beloved face.

“Well, it wasn’t,” he said.

“I see that,” Kim said. “I believe you.”

There was nothing for it. Will would have to trust him. Despite it all, he thought maybe he did. The moon was giving way, now, to the dawn; it was nearly the morning. He slept, still curled into Kim’s warm real body, and in the morning he woke to the smell of sausages and tea.

“Come and have some,” called Kim, and Will walked through the door and joined him.

**Author's Note:**

> This particular fic is a tiny tribute to the Lord Peter Wimsey short story, "The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba," except I couldn't bear to have Kim "dead" for two years--three weeks was quite enough.


End file.
